Asa summoned rain clouds over the trenches, but a Sapphire witch quickly dispelled them with light magic. Asa’s water pooled into the breach, only to be siphoned away by the enemy witch. The Sapphires wouldn’t have to wade through the breach as Asa had intended, but it made no difference to Zander. They still had to face his blade on their ascent.

“Mirrevar!” Zander bellowed, slashing the first Sapphire who braved the breach, sending the squire tumbling back into the trench. They kept coming—knights, squires—falling one by one beneath his blade. Zander didn’t see them as men or the occasional woman. They weren’t people with families, conscripted into a war against their will. They weren’t Leverians who believed that the Second Great Wizard would forge the great peace. Nor did he regard them as people fighting to avenge the friends and family they had lost to this war. His full moon eyes didn’t see any of those things. They were soulless and lacked a story of their own. They were stepping stones along the path to glory. Zander leapt from stone to stone with relentless precision, a master carving out his destiny.

River and the rest of the Hometown Heroes fought furiously at his side; their instincts worked together in such a seamless integration that they would’ve embarrassed the Celegan-tamed wolves. Unlike Zander, they weren’t fighting for personal glory, but for each other, for the land they wanted to see at peace once more. The trench became a mass grave, bodies piling up, giving the Sapphires a grotesque foothold to climb into the breach.

The air turned cold, and a burst of fire surged toward the gate. Asa was ready; she summoned a mystical waterfall that drowned the flames. The Sapphire wizard tried to counter with lightning, hoping to disrupt the relentless barrage of arrows, but Asa’s light outshone his efforts. Her radiance neutralized his magic, sending waves of enemies stumbling and blinded. The group charging Zander’s breach were sent to their knees by a burst of light. A heartbeat later, an onager dropped a stone on them. Arrows from the nearby watchtowers pierced through plate and leather, punching deep into any Sapphires that survived the stones.

Battle raged like a tempest on the Sinful Steppe, time speeding along as the Hometown Heroes held their ground. Everything seemed to go according to plan. The enemy’s forces, though vast, were disorganized and overwhelmed by their defenses.

Zander and River fought side by side, taking the lead. Zander rescued River from an ankle-biting cut by deflecting it with his sword while River skillfully put a cleft in the footman’s head. River repaid Zander by deflecting a lance bound for Zander’s abdomen. Zander cut through the lance’s wooden shaft and the lancer was shot down by an arrow from above.

The tempest raged on. Zander fought an invader on even ground as a Ruby archer fell off the wall and landed a few feet away with an arrow stuck in his chest. Zander battered the knight back into the trench, his head no longer atop his shoulders. He readied his blade to catch the next wave of invaders, but the steady stream of enemies had been dammed.

“Move aside!” Zander shouted.

“Get down!” River roared at the same moment.

Arrows flooded the breach, whooshing past where Zander had been moments before. He heard a pained scream beside him: Gordan.

Zander yanked the arrow from Gordan’s side. The wounded boy clenched his teeth in agony. “Run to the medicans! We’ll hold the breach!” Zander ordered.

“No! I can still fight!” Gordan gasped, clutching his wound, his gaze fixed on River.

River’s voice was harsher than Zander had ever heard. He stepped toward Gordan with a force that made even Zander back away. “Don’t be stubborn! You’re no good to me dead!”

Sometimes, words cut sharper than swords and pierced deeper than arrows. Crying, Gordan turned and limped toward the medicans.

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Five Sapphires scrambled through the breach after the arrow barrage, and Zander quickly found himself in the center of chaos. Theo and Vernon engaged two of the Sapphires. Two knights turned toward him, while the third swung a blade at River.

Zander moved with swift precision, his body responding with practiced ease. He had faced worse in training back at Bear’s Crossing, where Sir Edward often pitted him against multiple opponents. Back then, he hadn’t lost, and he had no intention of losing now. Blocking one knight’s advance with his shield, he parried the other’s strike with his sword. Both enemies pressed down, trying to split his strength and overwhelm him.

With a grunt, Zander shifted his weight, bending his knees as he braced himself. In one powerful motion, he extended upward, shoving them back with a force that sent one knight tumbling and the other flying into the air.

Finish strong.

Zander drove his sword into the downed knight’s visor, ending him instantly. But the second knight recovered quickly, swinging his blade toward Zander as he urgently rolled away—his sword still lodged in the first knight’s helmet.

Unarmed and facing a knight in full plate, Zander did the only rational thing he could—he closed the distance, tackling his opponent to the ground. The Sapphire knight’s longsword flew from his grip as he hit the dirt. The knight reached for his knife, but Zander wrenched his arm backward, the sickening pop of ripping his arm from his torso followed by a howl of pain. Zander silenced him with a quick stab to the throat.

Yanking his sword free from the dead knight’s visor like the storybook king pulling the sword from the stone, Zander surveyed the chaos. River was locked in a fierce duel with another Sapphire, evenly matched. Theo had already felled his opponent and was now helping Vernon. But Zander’s attention snapped back to the breach as five more Sapphires climbed through.

Two of them fell immediately, felled by poisoned arrows, writhing as they tumbled back into the overflowing trench. Zander dropped his shield and took his sword in both hands, sweeping it in a deadly arc. The first two invaders collapsed, one nearly severed at the hip, the other with a deep gash that would bleed him out slowly. The third knight deflected the blow off his plate, managing to stay upright.

The Sapphire knight, enraged, launched a wild counterattack. Zander parried the strike and pushed back, his feet planted firmly in the blood-soaked ground. Unable to match, Zander’s strength, the enemy slipped in the mud, losing his balance. Finish strong. Zander’s sword cut cleanly through his neck, sending the head toppling before the body slumped.

Retrieving his shield, Zander prepared to aid River, but three more enemies crawled through the breach. He bashed one invader back into the trench, while another, intimidated by Zander’s stature and brutality, jumped out of the breach. Zander met the last invader’s strike, the man’s voice calling out a name Zander couldn’t make out in the heat of the battle. With a practiced maneuver that Sir Evan taught him, Zander disarmed him, then de-armed him at the shoulder in one swift motion. Blood gushed out like a river as the Sapphire screamed, clutching his severed limb.

Zander hesitated, tendrils of pity clawing through his bloodlust. But the cold voice inside whispered, Finish strong. Zander thrust his blade into the man’s abdomen. The boy cried for his mother as he died, his eyes wide with fear and pain. Seeing himself reflected in the dying boy’s eyes, Zander didn’t recognize the blood-drenched beast staring back at him. This couldn’t be the same boy who once cried at his mother’s deathbed, begging her not to go.

Something inside him died as he pressed his leg against the dying boy’s abdomen and kicked him back into the trench, using the corpse’s momentum to pull his sword free. The blood on his blade glistened in the moonlight, and for the first time, Zander questioned his purpose. What am I doing? The Sapphires aren’t evil...

A cry of pain cut through his thoughts. Vernon had taken an arrow to the arm just as he finished off his opponent. Zander dropped to the ground, instinctively dodging a volley of arrows whizzing overhead. Then came the sound he dreaded—the thump of an arrow finding its mark.

Zander looked up, his breath catching in his throat. River clutched at his chest, an arrow protruding from it. Their eyes met, a fleeting moment of recognition and despair. The Sapphire knight, his helm adorned with horns, slashed down in a merciless arc, cutting River open from waist to shoulder.

“NO!” Zander’s scream tore through the battlefield as he charged, his vision consumed by a red haze. Pure hatred surged through him, drowning out all thought, all reason, all emotions beside hate. Darkness flooded his soul, and a single command echoed in his mind.

KILL. KILL. KILL. KILL. KILL. KILL. KILL. KILL. KILL. KILL. KILL. KILL. KILL.